


Where the Heart Is

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Ensemble cast cameos, Family Feels, Fluff, M/M, Mustang's Team, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28798446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: In which Ed accidentally hosts a housewarming party, and even more accidentally enjoys it.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 42
Kudos: 444
Collections: FMA Secret Santa 2020





	Where the Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlueRoseYue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueRoseYue/gifts).



> I had the honor and delight of pinch-hitting for BlueRoseYue's FMA Secret Santa gift this year! I tried to cram as many of the things that you mentioned liking as I could fit into one giant fluffball of a fic. :D I hope you enjoy it, and a belated happy holidays!! ♥
> 
> This sucker is set… 7-8-ish???? years post-Brotherhood. Other than blithely ignoring the epilogue, most things are more or less the same! Ed and Al traveled a lot (mostly together) and spent some time in Xing. :D
> 
> I spent the entire time I was working on this trying to come up with a better title, but I was ultimately unsuccessful, so I apologize for that. X'D

A year ago, when Al had said, “Brother, do you… do you want to get a house?”, Ed had said, “Sure, kid,” because that was what he said any time that Al wanted anything.

Over the course of the process, he’d come to realize that he never would have done it if the idea had come from anyone _but_ Al. Setting aside the fact that every last cen of their savings had just gone up in smoke—or gone into property, depending on how you looked at it—he’d had to learn and retain so much boring crap about mortgages and down payments and taxes and loans that his brain had practically dribbled out his ears after a while.

Al had enjoyed it—that was the only thing that really mattered. Al had enjoyed every single one of the weird, jargon-heavy grownup travails of it; and they’d checked out little places all over Central; and after the first time that a real estate agent had pressured them, Roy had started joining them on their viewings, wearing his uniform, and just stood behind Ed with his gloved hands in his pockets, silent and smiling, until the agents started to sweat.

Roy… well. Roy had been an equally weird, although much less jargon-heavy, grownup travail. Roy was the reason that Ed actually enjoyed coffee now—or most of the reason, anyway. For one thing, it was a hell of a lot easier to enjoy all kinds of things when you no longer felt like you were living every second on time borrowed at a steep interest rate. But it had also helped that specifically going out to meet Roy for coffee on weekends had made Ed associate the taste with a lot of ribbing, and decent conversation, and an initially shocking amount of conspiratorial laughter. Plus when you acquired higher-quality stuff, and then slowed down enough to figure out how you liked it best, and then slowed down even further and _tasted_ it, coffee turned out to be pretty pleasant.

Roy had turned out to be pretty damn pleasant, too.

They’d circled around each other for what was, in retrospect, an embarrassingly long time, but Ed appreciated it when he wasn’t too busy bemoaning all of the missed opportunities to wake Roy up in the middle of the night by curling up against his back to leech his body heat. They’d spent a lot of time figuring out how to get along before either of them had ever seriously considered trying to get lucky.

They might very well have kept it up indefinitely if there hadn’t been an intervention from what was, in retrospect, the likeliest source.

Almost four years before the house thing, Al had said, “If Amestris’s three most tragically eligible bachelors all have to be single on Valentine’s Day, the least that we can do is go out for a nice dinner together and make some other people jealous.”

And Ed had said, “Sure, kid.”

Because it was Al, and because Valentine’s Day had fallen on a weeknight, and because they had all planned to meet at the restaurant after work, and because Ed had been up to his ears in rewrites on his alchemy textbook… he had suspected nothing. He had continued to suspect nothing right up until he and Roy had arrived, and the hostess at the front desk of the _extremely_ fancy food-slinging establishment that Al had picked had said, “Yes, Elric, party of two—right this way,” and led them to a tiny little table with a candle and some flowers on it.

Al had even paid for the damn food in advance, so they couldn’t just _leave_. He’d forced them to split a dessert, which Ed had been certain would end in bloodshed; and the meal was a special and came with cutesy cocktails that had fruit stuck on the rims of the glasses. Ed had been so mad about the betrayal and so uncomfortable with the prospect of ruining what he and Roy already _had_ that he’d grabbed the raspberry off of his drink and chucked it at Roy’s head.

Roy had caught it.

Roy had popped it into his mouth.

And then Roy had snatched the little half of a lemon slice off of his own stupid cocktail and thrown it back at Ed.

It was somewhat harder to stammer awkwardly about misunderstandings and obnoxious overreaching brothers when you were both trying not to laugh loud enough to attract the attention of a waitstaff who would definitely judge you for acting like children in a hoity-toity restaurant, and that… shifted things. Incrementally. One little stone twisted and settled into a different space.

Which was just enough, as it happened, for an avalanche.

They’d given up and just enjoyed themselves. They’d taken potshots at Al the entire time, which he _deserved_ , although Roy had rightfully given the little jerk some credit for successfully deceiving someone whose entire job was deceiving different people in different ways. The food had been great. Roy had looked fucking incredible in the candlelight, and he’d kept smiling, and laughing, and doing that raised-eyebrow gently-mischievous eye-gleam thing that he did sometimes over coffee that made Ed’s guts go molten every time.

Roy had also insisted that Ed eat their supposed-to-be-romantically-shared dessert. Ed had asked him if his mama had raised a quitter. Roy had said, “You’ll enjoy it more than I will,” which was followed almost immediately by, “I dare you,” which in turn was followed by, “I bet you can’t finish it by yourself.”

Roy had delivered him back to the apartment complex that he and Al had lived in at the time. He had refused Roy’s offer of a hand getting out of the car: the amount that he’d eaten _did_ hurt, but he could still walk, and fully intended to prove it. Roy had strolled up to the lobby of the building alongside him anyway, making it look very suave and very casual and very subtly concerned. He’d said, “Are you sure that you’re all right?” twice in ninety seconds, which had to be some sort of personal record, but he hadn’t even paused to celebrate. And Ed had realized, with the sort of slowly-dawning revelatory horror that usually accompanied moments like this one, that Al had been _right_.

There were a number of things in the universe worse than Al gloating. Ed did some mental arithmetic and weighed his options. He determined that passing up an opportunity to grab Roy Mustang’s pretty-boy tie at the lobby door and pull him in and kiss him was probably one of them.

So Ed did it.

Roy, once released, stared at him open-mouthed for several seconds, so he added a “Happy Valentine’s Day, asshole,” followed by a “How’s Saturday for you?”

And somehow, that was… that. It had been so easy that Ed still wondered how it hadn’t happened sooner, and also if it ever would have happened on its own.

He’d thought that one over a lot, and he’d come to the conclusion that it probably would have, but the inciting incident likely would have involved an eventual explosion of pent-up sexual tension that would have ended in weird mixed messages and set them back several more months.

It was good of Al to have saved them that, even if it was also a sneaky little rat-brother thing to do. He hadn’t even _pretended_ to be surprised.

What it really added up to, though, was that when Al wanted to get a house, Ed would have crawled across coals to make it happen, let alone learned a book full of stupid made-up real estate words.

It had taken them a long time to find one that felt like it fit. One of the parts of Ed that was older than most of the other parts had known that that would happen—had known that they had deliberately put off putting down roots for so long that the ground would seem harder when they tried. He’d known that they would put too much stock in it; he’d known that they would set their hearts on something ‘perfect’ and refuse to settle into something good. He’d known that they were trying to compare tangible features of little cottages built in Central City to the memory of a house that had been a home for reasons entirely unrelated to the color of the walls or the shape of the eaves or the size of the windows. He’d known that they were going to come very close to giving up on the whole project more than once.

But _almost_ was, as Ed liked to say because it always made Roy do this glorious little grimacing shudder, good enough for horseshoes and hand grenades. Al wanted to get a house. And any time that it was even remotely in Ed’s power to give or to bring into being, Al got what he wanted.

Roy had actually found the listing for this one. Ed had never bothered asking if he’d intimidated the real estate agent in advance, but he’d added a bit of extra tongue to his thank-you kiss just in case.

Ed had known that Al would like it from the description in the flyer. It had an ‘airy’ master bedroom, which meant big windows, which meant lots of sunlight to ease Al gently back into the world of the living after some lovely dreams. It had a ‘spacious kitchen’ with an ‘open floor plan’, which was another thing Al wanted; he liked to be able to yell back and forth when one of them was making food and one of them was being a lazy shit on the couch. The apartment had been good for that, but the neighbors hadn’t enjoyed it very much. This place also had a ‘porch’, and a ‘sumptuous yard’, and—possibly most enticingly—an ‘old-style Eastern charm’.

Ed had long since decided that he hated real estate listings marginally more than he hated military correspondence, but it was a close thing. Fortunately, blessedly, _mercifully_ , he’d been able to tell as soon as they’d turned the street corner in Roy’s car that the code-word-heavy language on this one carried more kernels of truth than most of the others that they’d visited.

The outside walls were off-white, but the door was green—a gentle allusion to their old house, but the porch made it more immediately reminiscent of Pinako’s. There was a really nice, grassy lawn. Ed could see from the road that there were some trees in the backyard—he hoped that they were fruit trees; Al would love that.

The real estate agent who had come to meet them was one of the ones that Roy and Al had both previously agreed wasn’t full of shit, but Ed wasn’t really listening to her extoll the virtues of the place as she showed them around. He kind of already knew.

The master bedroom was all done up in a soft kind of white color, and the huge windows had curtains, and the sunlight painted gorgeous gold stripes across it everywhere. One look at Al’s expression confirmed Ed’s suspicions that he was going to fall in love with this one pretty much on sight.

There were two other bedrooms and another bathroom—all of them situated on the opposite side of the house, with the wide-open living room and kitchen space set in between. Maybe that was an unconventional layout or something, but Ed thought it was _brilliant_. He wouldn’t disturb Al staying up until “strange and reckless” hours of the night planning out lab experiments, and the bedroom in the corner had windows that he could easily black out with some decent curtains for the mornings after the all-nighters. Plus he wouldn’t disturb Al with… anything else. Such as inviting over the incredibly suave smooth-talker who was currently standing behind him, asking some irrelevant question about utilities.

They could turn the other bedroom into a library-study thing. The kitchen had a long stretch of countertop jutting out from the wall that divided it from the living room; they could put barstools there and not even have to mess around with a dining table, since they’d never bothered to get one for the old apartment anyway. The living room had a windowseat that looked out over the lawn. One of the trees in the back was an orange tree, and one was apple, and Ed opened his mouth to say that they would fucking take it, but the real estate agent was still talking, so he shut his mouth again. Probably Al and Roy would insist on “negotiating” or some nonsense anyway. As long as they could still buy it, Ed really didn’t care about the specifics.

One of the things that he’d learned over the years was how to practice patience even when his whole body felt like it was humming with adrenaline. He clamped his jaw shut, forced a smile on, and waited until they’d said goodbye to the real estate agent and walked halfway down the little stone pathway in the front.

“Ed,” Roy said, and his hand rose high enough to graze Ed’s shoulder-blade. Dead giveaway that he was worried, so probably Ed’s smile hadn’t looked as calm and normal and un-deranged as he’d hoped. “Are you all right?”

Ed looked over at Al.

Al was already looking back at him, and his eyes were huge and _so_ damn bright.

“Yeah,” Al said.

Ed turned to Roy.

“We want that one,” he said.

Roy blinked. “Are you—”

“Yes,” they said together.

Roy blinked again, and then arched an eyebrow, and glanced at the house again over his shoulder.

“Good choice,” he said.

  


* * *

  


Somehow, even though it had never seemed like they’d accumulated all that much stuff, the only thing more exhausting than packing had been unpacking. Ed had eventually just collapsed on the rug in front of the squooshy armchair and stared at their ceiling for a while. _Their_ ceiling. That was pretty cool.

When Roy had nudged his ribs with a sockfoot to make sure that he was awake, he’d said, “Maybe pretty soon, we could throw a little party or something. Just… have a couple of people over. You think anybody would show up? It might be kinda nice.”

Al had said, “Yeah!”, and Roy had said, “Hmm.”

Ed probably should have seen it coming.

  


* * *

  


It rained like hell the following Friday night, which had been a pain in a variety of ways—the automail port had ached like the Ed’s bones were staging a secession and trying to separate themselves from the rest of his body. Al had used that as an excuse to test out their new fireplace, which had helped; but Roy’s low-light vision was _just_ iffy enough these days that Ed had insisted that he shouldn’t come over after work, which was annoying.

It was annoying not to have him around, and it was annoying that it was annoying, because it wasn’t like Ed could come right out and say _Life is just generally nicer and more fun with you in it_. It would go to Roy’s head, which was already so big after the last promotion that you couldn’t buy him hats as presents anymore.

Roy also sometimes misinterpreted things that Ed had meant seriously, like when he’d said that Roy had missed his true calling as a massage therapist—which he really, _really_ had meant seriously. That part would’ve been extremely useful last night in combating the effects of the rain.

At least the third day of October had cut them much more slack than the second one: it offered up a nice, clear morning, and the air tasted extraordinarily clean after the rain. Most of the water had dried up off of the pavement, but droplets of it were still clinging to the trees and the bushes and making them all sparkle.

Unfortunately, the packing-relocating-unpacking-collapsing process had not left them time to buy a ladder. Ed had never before considered that he might someday find himself in the position of needing to purchase one of those. They seemed like the sort of thing that just… existed. Like they should come with the house.

So he and Al didn’t have one. But the rain had brought one of the roofing shingles down off of the eaves, right where it angled down low over their little porch.

Which was why he was currently sitting on Major General Roy Mustang’s shoulders in his front yard, valiantly attempting to hammer a couple of nails through this bastard of a shingle, while Major General Roy Mustang was subtly feeling up Ed’s legs in full view of his brand-new neighbors.

“Hey,” Ed said when Roy’s fingers walked themselves up over his knees on both sides and started pressing into his thighs. “Right now, we’re being ‘handy’—not ‘handsy’. Okay? I know you have trouble telling them apart.”

Roy said, all perfect innocence, “You make it hard.”

“Y’know,” Ed said, trying to make it marginally less obvious that he was biting down on the inside of his cheek, “if you keep that up, one of us is gonna get a claw hammer in a place he doesn’t want it. Three guesses who and where.”

Roy said, “I’ll try anything once,” but he’d taken up patting at the outsides of Ed’s thighs in a much less suggestive way. “May I say one more thing?”

Ed bit down harder to contain the grin. “Is it a ‘nailing’ joke?”

“I have been advised,” Roy said airily, “to refrain from confirming or denying that speculation.”

It was very, very troublesome trying to hold the nail steady when he was also trying not to laugh. “You know the context of how we usually talk about nailing where I’m from?”

“Yes,” Roy said. “Nailing my hide to the barn door. It’s very unfortunate that you didn’t think of that before you made that down payment. I don’t think you have room in the back for a barn.”

As much as Ed was genuinely enjoying this, if he fell because the contained laughter was ricocheting around so hard in his lungs that it set him off-balance, Al was going to kill him. And if he didn’t fall, and they kept this up instead, the neighbors probably would. Ed hadn’t even _met_ them yet.

“Okay,” he said. “Shut your mouth for five seconds while I _do_ this, and then we can go inside and draw up some blueprints for a barn door just big enough to tack you up on. Is that a d—”

“ _Edward Elric_!”

Ed would die before admitting it, but Roy’s suggestive grip on his legs had just saved his ass: the combination of the booming voice and his sheer surprise at hearing it almost tipped him backwards far enough to land him on the wet lawn spine-first.

“Alex!” Ed said. He’d downplayed enough near-death experiences over the years that this one barely even charted, but from the way that Roy smoothed his hand along the side of Ed’s knee with a hint of gratitude, it was obvious that he knew what his reflexes had just rescued them both from. “How’ve you been!”

Armstrong crossed their wide lawn in about three strides to beam at them. He was still taller than Ed right now. What the _hell_.

“Splendid!” Armstrong said, so emphatically that it was difficult to imagine a time when that wouldn’t have been his response. “I just happened to be passing by on my way back from the farmers’ market—” Ed automatically tried to imagine the geography, but he hadn’t pinpointed their house on his mental map of Central just yet. “—and thought I ought to swing by to see you and dear Alphonse!”

Ed thought it was a little weird that Armstrong had just treated Roy like chopped liver, and Roy _hadn’t sassed him_ , but before he could comment, Armstrong had produced a little white pot overflowing with a very not-little orchid.

“I brought this!” Armstrong said, apparently enormously proud of it despite the fact that the pot almost disappeared into his hand. “It would look truly tremendous on a windowsill!”

Ed wasn’t much of a flower person, but this one was pretty impressive, and Al was going to love the cheerful purple blooms dangling off of it everywhere. It seemed odd that Armstrong had gone to the trouble of carrying a flower all this way when he normally seemed to be able to produce them at will, but it _was_ a really nice plant.

“Wow,” Ed managed. “Um—you really didn’t have to do that. Thanks.”

“Nonsense!” Armstrong had just glittered in the sunlight. Roy was so quiet that Ed wanted to check his forehead and see if he was sick, but a glance down confirmed that he was apparently just so occupied with a shit-eating grin that he couldn’t talk at the same time for once. “A fine new home such as this, owned by such fine young men, merits gifts of great beauty and pristine quality! It is, in truth of fact, quite simply the _least_ that I could do. I would be honored past description if you would accept it.”

He held it out, half-bowing his head, which required Ed to shuffle the hammer around to try to take it—

“Are you experiencing some difficulty with repairs?” Armstrong asked, looking at the asshole of a shingle. “Please, allow me!”

“Uh,” Ed said, carefully handing over the hammer. “O…kay. Tha—”

Armstrong slammed the hammer into the nail so hard that the entire roof shook, which probably made it some sort of an architectural miracle that the whole house didn’t fall down. The shingle, however, looked like it would never, ever cause them any sort of trouble again.

Scrambling footsteps was Ed’s only other warning before—

“ _Brother_!” Al cried before he’d even flung the door open. “Are you—oh! Major Amstrong! Hello! That… explains a lot.”

“Alphonse!” Armstrong said, and Al subtly braced his feet in the nick of time before Armstrong clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make the porch creak. “You look terrific! So hearty and hale!”

“Thank you,” Al said, grinning up at him in the way that made Ed’s heart squeeze itself halfway out of his chest every single time. “Well, since you’re here—why don’t you come inside? You’ll, um, need to duck to get through the doorway, I think, but I can make you some tea, and give you the tour, and—”

Roy let Ed down onto the porch railing, from which he could jump down to the porch without jarring his knee enough to make Winry’s head perk up and her eyes go red from eighty miles away. Ed held the door for Roy, which seemed like the sort of thing that you should do when you’d just bought a house. Ed then collapsed onto the cushiest armchair, because he’d done all the hard work, and Roy had really just distracted him and possibly scandalized their neighbors; and Roy dropped into the second-cushiest one.

Al was very excitedly telling Alex something about the windows in the bedroom and the possibility of cats, and Alex was rumbling an agreement. Ed spared a vague hope that his own unmade bed wasn’t _too_ shameful, and that he’d closed the fun drawer in the nightstand. He was pretty sure that he had. Maybe he’d get up in another minute just to check. Maybe Al was smart enough not to risk it.

“So,” Roy said after a few moments that Ed spent staring up at their nice vaulted ceiling, still trying to acclimate to the idea that it was, in fact, _their_ ceiling. “How does it feel to be a homeowner?”

“That word still sounds like gibberish,” Ed said. He looked at their kitchen, and their walls, and their books, and their fireplace, and their couch. They could fit a second couch. They’d had to buy more chairs to put up against that counter-bar-thing separating the kitchen from the living room, so that they could sit there and inhale cereal and elbow at each other properly. There was room for a dining table if they changed their minds about that. But what the hell would you do with two couches? Ed supposed that two couches would allow both of the gibberish-word-people who had signed the papers to take a nap at the same time, but they had nice beds for that now. He’d gotten a bigger one. “I sort of… I dunno. I kinda figured we’d be nomads for longer than this, I guess. But we’ve got… stuff, now. To do. Easier to do stuff when you’ve got a place.”

“And easier to decorate,” Roy said. Ed could hear in his voice without even glancing over that he was _gazing_ , not looking. “I’m surprised that you’ve shown so much mercy so far.”

“Operative phrase in that one is ‘so far’,” Ed said, mustering up a nice wolfish grin for him to keep him on his toes. “Wait ’til the first weekend Al goes to visit Winry or something. We’re gonna have _fun_.”

Roy winced a little, so possibly the wolfish thing was working. “Do I have to be an accomplice?”

“I can’t exactly do decorative alchemy by myself anymore,” Ed said. “So if you wanna be rewarded for good behavior—”

“Oh, dear,” Roy said. “Normally I’m very good with bribes.”

“This is blackmail,” Ed said.

“Trust me, my love,” Roy said, deliberately arching an eyebrow in that way that always made Ed’s breath stick halfway up his throat for a second, because he _knew_ it meant that Ed wouldn’t get a chance to protest. “I know the difference. And I know what you’re capable of.”

Before Ed could diagram for him how to get his head out of his ass, there were footsteps on the porch—a _lot_ of footsteps on the porch. And then there was a knock at the door.

“Hold that thought,” Ed said, slinging himself up and out of the chair, “so that I can beat you with it.”

“All right,” Roy said, very mildly, as Ed crossed to the door, put on his _Hi, I’m a nice, normal person who has unreservedly positive feelings about the prospect of long-term neighbors_ smile, and opened it.

“Good afternoon, Ed,” Hawkeye said, smiling at him warmly. The sentiment was echoed by the rest of the usual suspects from behind her, but they had to wait for her to finish hugging him tightly before he could back out of the doorway to let them through. “This is for you and Al,” Hawkeye was saying as she stepped in, raising a large white paper bag with some slightly wilty turquoise tissue paper crammed on top. “We were… in the area.”

Havoc clapped Ed on the back hard enough to knock him towards Breda, who ruffled his hair _right_ up to the brink of where Ed could have called noogie rules and tackled him to the floor.

“We went in on something for you guys!” Havoc was saying as Ed glared and tried to pat his hair back down. “Just, uh… being in the area, and all. Y’know.”

“Here you go!” Fuery said, pushing a huge, heavy box into his hands. There was a big red bow on top.

“It’s a gramophone,” Falman said, patting Ed’s shoulder.

“You’re not supposed to _tell_ him,” Havoc said.

Falman looked affronted. “It says it on the box.”

“Uh,” Ed managed as the plainclothes shoes started to pile up next to the shoe rack that Al had insisted that they buy so that they could ignore it, “thanks.”

The team proceeded in past him. As soon as they’d cleared the doorway, he leveled a meaningful look on Roy.

“Oh, dear,” Roy said. He was actually batting his eyelashes. What a _monster_. “I must have accidentally left my daybook open on my desk, and they happened to see that I was planning to come over.”

“Bullshit,” Ed said. “I’ve seen your daybook. The only thing you’ve ever used that for is to draw a bunch of stop-motion pictures of a stick figure guy down in the bottom page corners, so that when you flip through it, he does little cartwheels.”

Roy was grinning without a single trace of chagrin. “You’re my muse.”

“Shut up,” Ed said. He kicked the door shut; Havoc had already stolen his chair, so he put the box down on the floor next to their windowseat until he found a more permanent home for its contents. He raised his voice in the direction of the hall. “Hey, Al?”

At least having Armstrong in tow made Al look smaller than he normally did as he bounded back into the living room and then paused, eyes widening.

“Oh,” he said. “We’re going to run out of tea.”

Hawkeye showed him the huge white bag. The front side had _Useful things to have in your house kit_ written on it. She reached in and extracted a huge silver tin.

“No, you won’t,” she said.

Al’s eyes lit up. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

Ed wasn’t sure which ‘in-the-area’ gift he was more morbidly curious to open, given that he had _no_ idea what the team’s taste in music was, or what Hawkeye considered to be critical possessions. He hoped that she’d left Hayate with a nice dog-sitter; the poor little guy was starting to get a bit creaky these days. Then again, Ed supposed that there were people who probably would have said the same about him.

Including the person whose voice he had just heard from a front porch that only a handful of people were supposed to know about.

“Of course it’s the right one,” Winry was saying. “It looks like your place, Granny. That’s not a coincidence; they’re really just that obvious.”

“ _Excuse_ me,” Ed called through the door.

“Excuse yourself, lazy-ass!” Winry called back delightedly.

Paninya laughed uproariously while Pinako told Winry to watch her language, and Ed sighed feelingly and stumped back over to the door.

“Let me guess,” he said as he pulled it open. “You were just passing through. Despite the, y’know, minor detail of the huge detour you had to take to Resembool to pick up the hag.”

“Maybe you’re finally getting smarter,” Winry said smugly, flinging an arm around his shoulders and planting a disgustingly wet kiss right in the center of his cheek. “Where’s Al?”

“Tea duty,” Ed said. “Hi, Granny. Hey, Paninya.”

“Here you go!” Paninya said, shoving a very shiny, very red toolbox at him.

“We talked it over,” Pinako said, leaning heavily on her cane as she hobbled over the threshold, “and we decided that you’re finally old enough to have your own wrench.”

“I’m touched,” Ed said. He shoved the toolbox off to the side of the shoe rack so that he could gently take Pinako’s other elbow, and Roy leapt out of his chair like he’d been burned so that he could vacate it for her. It looked like Roy remembered the wrench stories. “What kind of tea do you want?”

“Ed, my boy,” Pinako said, settling wearily, “at my age, a syringe of liquid caffeine directly to the heart would still barely keep me awake until dinnertime after a train ride like that. Hit me with everything you’ve got.”

Ed saluted her much more sharply than he’d ever done for any military schmuck. Roy made a wounded noise. So that was nice.

  


* * *

  


Al looked very stressed as he started grabbing down a significant portion of the mugs that they’d relocated from boxes into cabinets last weekend, so Ed went to check on him under the guise of helping.

“We don’t have any snack food,” Al whispered, looking wild-eyed. “I mean—we _did_ , but you and I ate it all. What are we going to feed them?”

Ed opened his mouth to say _They showed up unannounced; we don’t have to feed them_ and just… couldn’t. He could hear the words inside of his head, but he couldn’t get them out.

He cleared his throat.

“We could go get a pizza,” he said.

Al looked over Ed’s shoulder—not that that was easy for him; it definitely, certainly, clearly wasn’t—and bit his lip. “…several pizzas.”

“The tea will hold them for a while,” Ed said. He looked up at the shelves that they’d only just crammed all of their glassware onto. “Do we… have enough mugs?”

Al wrinkled his nose. “Um… for now.”

Ed wrinkled his right back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Al sighed.

But not loud enough to drown out a knock at the door.

“I’m going to kill him,” Ed said. “Don’t bail me out; we gotta pay this place off.”

Al patted his shoulder. “Wait to kill him until after you’ve sent him out to pick up pizza.”

“Good idea,” Ed said, and went to answer the damn door _again_.

As soon as he’d opened it, a flashbulb went off in his face.

He thought for a second that the journalists had stalked Roy to another dead end, thinking once again that they were gong to get a salacious story out of a guy who routinely spent Sunday mornings asleep with a newspaper draped over his face. But even before Ed had blinked the bright red afterimage out of his eyes, he heard a familiar giggle.

“Sorry,” Elysia said. “You always get the best pictures when you catch people by surprise. Gets into something about who they really are, somehow. Hi!”

That was kind of backwards, as greetings went, but Ed’s whole life was kind of backwards, and he’d understood the gist. “‘Hi’ yourself, lady. I’ll give you five thousand cens if you can surprise Roy so much that he screams. Without hurting his eyes, though. C’mon in.”

Elysia said, “ _Sold_!” so loud that everybody looked over and started waving and then beckoning, like she was a friendly pet instead of a pre-teen shaping up to be every bit as viciously intelligent as her dad had been.

Gracia was laughing as she hugged Ed as tightly as Hawkeye had, despite the disadvantage of only having one arm to do it with because the other arm was holding a stack of pies.

“She’s going to make you a scrapbook,” Gracia said. “We’re very into that right now.”

“That sounds awesome,” Ed said, meaning it. “I failed arts and crafts in school. Ask Al. All I ever wanted to draw was circles, and I always got glue in my hair.”

Elysia had already descended on the assembled company. “ _Say ‘alchemy’_!”

A blond streak whooshed past Ed at a velocity fairly comparable to the speed of light and flung itself into Gracia’s open arm.

“May I please make you some tea if we have enough mugs?” Al asked.

Gracia laughed again as she hugged him. “That sounds lovely, dear.”

  


* * *

  


Distributing the tea was an exercise in resource allocation that Roy really should have been paying more attention to, but at least he did immediately get up to help. And he did graze his hand across the small of Ed’s back in that way that he liked to do that sent a torrential shiver up Ed’s spine and then slung it back down so hard that his right-foot toes tingled. And he did say “Is there anything else that I can do?”, and then only stretched out like a cat on the windowseat again when everyone in the room had a mug in their hands.

Ed went over to him. Roy had spread himself out enough to take up the space of one and a half people, so Ed made a show of moving to sit on top of his feet, and Roy jerked them out of the way, and then Ed settled down next to him and wrapped both of his arms around Roy’s knees and leaned on them a little bit. It was a weird sort of side varietal of a regular hug, but it felt nice.

“Guess we got lucky,” Ed said. “We didn’t _quite_ run out of chairs.”

Roy said, “Ah.”

Ed looked at him. “Mustang.”

“Don’t worry,” Roy said. “There’s plenty of room. No one will mind.”

Ed stared at him. One of the nation’s most renowned strategists really thought that it was acceptable to expect your theoretical guests to sit on the floor. Amestris was _doomed_.

“They won’t care, Ed,” Roy said, smiling at him in a very incongruous way for a man who did not understand the purpose of furniture. He gestured out at the already fairly substantial crowd of friends and family and mostly people who were both. Al and Elysia were in the middle of it; Alex was lifting her up in the air so that she could take a picture of Al from directly above. “They just want to be here.”

In the lifetime before this one—the life streaked through white with terror, and red with hurt; the life where every choice and every thought hummed underneath with consequences, because there wasn’t room for failure, but there wasn’t time to second-guess—Ed could have made them more chairs. He could have extracted a dozen of them from the floorboards, or the drywall, and put them back later mostly-good-as-new. He could have bent the world to his will and rebuilt it in the image that he’d imagined.

This lifetime was different. This lifetime involved a lot more acceptance, and a lot more… trust. There were a lot of things that he couldn’t change at will anymore. There were a lot of times when he just had to let things be.

“I’m still conscripting you to go get pizza,” Ed said. “We’re down to the last of the mugs, and the pies are going to last about forty-five seconds, tops.”

Roy’s hand stroked down over his hair. This lifetime also included a shocking amount of casual intimacy with people that Ed had never even abstractly dreamed of being this close to. He liked that part, even if that was a trust thing, too, in its way. “A perilous assignment,” Roy said. “I will undertake it with the utmost dedication to cause and country, etcetera and so on. How’s your leg?”

“Hell of a lot better than yesterday,” Ed said. He was obviously not leaning into the stroking, and Al had no grounds whatsoever to imply that he was already a house-cat and wouldn’t notice new adopted brethren. “I think it helped when you groped it outside.”

“I wasn’t _groping_ ,” Roy said, tugging Ed’s ponytail gently. “I was—caressing. Worshipfully. _Respectfully_. I am deeply distressed by the fact that you apparently can’t tell the difference.”

“Huh,” Ed said. It was nice, having two hands for running up and down the shins of the weirdo that you were in love with while you were partly draped over him in a way that was probably going to give you a crick in the neck after a while, but would definitely be worth it until then. “That’s a shame. I was hoping that it was groping, so that later I could return the favor. I guess I could caress you later. Doesn’t sound as fun.”

“Later,” Roy said, lightly with just a _slice_ of an edge beneath it, just a sliver of heat; “you can do whatever you like, and call it whatever you want.” He dragged his fingers through the length of Ed’s ponytail again. “What do you want on that pizza?”

“Everything,” Ed said. “Except onions. Al hates the texture, and I think Elysia’s allergic or something.” There was a pull at the pit of his stomach—reluctance to move; to leave this; to break the benevolent spell in this warm, reserved little corner while the laughter of so many people he loved spilled out just before them. “You don’t have to go right now. They haven’t seen the pies yet.”

“Mm,” Roy said. “You’re right. Might be good to wait a few minutes.”

Ed eyed him. “Oh, yeah?”

There was a knock at the door.

“You’re also paying for the pizzas,” Ed said, grudgingly extracting himself from the tangle of their limbs. “Just so you know.”

“Duly noted,” Roy said, and it didn’t even dull his grin.

  


* * *

  


Sheska, who had also been inexplicably passing through a neighborhood she hadn’t known that they now lived in, had brought them some books—which was expected, certainly, but also really great.

Five minutes later, Rebecca Catalina turned up with a giant houseplant cradled in both arms. It looked like a fern. She swore up and down that she’d had one just like it back when she’d lived in the dorms in Eastern Command, and she’d never managed to kill it no matter how much she forgot about it, overcompensated by overwatering, and then forgot about it again. Ed put it on the kitchen countertop next to Armstrong’s orchid, and it nearly brushed the ceiling.

The moment that he’d relieved her of the pot, she was halfway across the room and then dipping herself over the back of Havoc’s chair to smooch him very thoroughly from above. Breda said, “If you suffocate, I’m not calling an ambulance”; and Elysia said, “Adults are _gross_.” Ed wasn’t going to say anything, obviously, but he personally thought that that was a better present than the plant.

When he turned around, Roy had appeared out of _nowhere_ and offered him a mug.

“You didn’t get any tea,” Roy said.

“I don’t need your dirty leaf juice,” Ed said.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Al called from where he was pulling faces in the background of Elysia’s photos of the extremely public display of affection, “so that I don’t have to commit any grievous bodily harm in front of children.”

Ed fake-turned to Roy and jerked a thumb over at Al. “My brother sure is a stand-up guy.”

Roy was giving him what Al called the Schmoop Treatment, which involved very soft eyes and a little half-smile and a general aura of adulation.

The camera flash flared in Ed’s peripheral vision this time—Elysia had probably caught him in profile, with a sharp focus on Roy doing the Schmoop.

Ed looked at her accusingly, but it was too late. That one was probably going to be a winner.

  


* * *

  


Havoc suggested a game of poker. He handed out cigarettes for ambiance; nobody lit them, but all the players stuck one in the corner of their mouth and accepted a glass of ice cubes and apple juice from Al. Everyone pooled their pocket change to use for chips. Rebecca wrapped her arms around Havoc’s shoulders from behind and whispered advice into his ear the entire time; Fuery and Breda teamed up, too; Hawkeye volunteered to deal, which came as no surprise; and Roy, Al, Winry, and Gracia rounded out the table. It was determined near-unanimously that it would be funny, but unfair, to let Sheska or Falman play, since they’d remember cards. Armstrong offered booming play-by-play commentary while doing arm-curls with Elysia hanging off of his forearm, lifting her into the air every time.

Despite the varying biases of the extremely raucous little crowd, Winry and Havoc and Rebecca had to bow out before they wanted, and yet another knock at the door startled Fuery enough that he dropped his and Breda’s hand right on the table. An amicable shouting match broke out over whether that counted, and Ed went to go get the damn door.

Maria Ross beamed at him from the porch.

Ed couldn’t help grinning back at her. “Passing through?”

“You know it,” Maria said. “Here!”

Ed looked down into the bag she’d shoved at him as he backed out of the doorway. “Are these… towels?”

“They’re the best towels you’re ever going to use in your life,” Maria said. “You’ll never want to use another towel again. I got them monogrammed. Roy’s still going to try to steal yours, though, so _don’t let him_.”

Ed saluted her, too.

Together, they returned to the chaos at the center of the living room. Apparently Hawkeye had re-dealt the prior hand, but Fuery and Breda had ended up losing it anyway, which left Ed’s brother, Ed’s boyfriend, and Gracia Hughes. Elysia had climbed up onto Armstrong’s shoulders to help narrate; apparently she’d entrusted Winry with the camera in the meantime.

Ed was not entirely sure that they were all going to make it out of this alive.

He went over to the kitchen to get Maria a glass of water and to start himself some tea after all. Maybe he’d have camomile or something. It wouldn’t stop the trainwreck, but it might imbue him with enough of a sense of calm that he wouldn’t be quite so fascinated by the twisted metal and seething flames.

“Thanks, Ed,” Maria said as he handed over her glass. “Are there secondary bets on who’s going to win?”

Ed opened his mouth to make an attempt at encapsulating the terrifying predicament of his unique personal investment in all of the contenders, but Armstrong came out with “ _The final hand of this illustrious contest_!” before he could speak, and the whole room went silent.

Except for Elysia, who raised an imperious index finger and said, “Illustrious!”

Roy had tucked his prop cigarette over his right ear and was maintaining a very subtle sly smile that told no one a damn thing about the cards that he had spread in his elegant fingers. Al had deposited his cigarette on the table; he took a demure sip of apple juice, smiling warmly, and calmly rearranged his cards. Gracia eyed the pot of loose change piled up in the center of the table and fiddled with her wedding ring, pushing at it with the pad of her thumb to twist it around her finger.

Ed suspected that the entire trio had intuited by now that the room couldn’t handle this kind of tension for much longer without somebody accidentally dropping one of Al’s favorite mugs onto the hardwood, because all three of them threw all of their remaining coins into the final round of betting. It felt fittingly climactic, all things considered: Ed had visions of black smoke and mutilated train tracks. Armstrong’s voice dropped to a dramatic whisper—which was still loud enough to shake the baseboards of their hard-won little house—and Elysia was holding her hands over her eyes, with her fingers parted just far enough to peek.

Hawkeye ordered all the cards down on the table. Everyone leaned in, and Ed could swear nobody even breathed.

Al had a pair of tens and a pair of sixes.

Gracia narrowly edged him out with a pair of jacks and a pair of fives.

Roy laid down…

…absolutely fucking nothing.

The stunned silence gave him the opportunity to say, “Read ’em and weep” with the start of a laugh catching in his voice.

And then the room exploded into such a collective _howl_ that Ed put his hands over his ears and gave up any hope of ever getting along with any of their neighbors inside of a square mile. Winry was snapping photos wildly. Armstrong was making some sort of final declaration; Elysia was echoing his every third word triumphantly; Gracia was contentedly gathering up her winnings; Al was knocking back the rest of his apple juice in one go; Hawkeye was shaking her head; and Roy was laughing so hard that he lit up the whole fucking room.

Ed turned to Maria and carefully lowered his hands.

“So,” he said. “How’ve you been?”

  


* * *

  


Catching up with Maria took long enough that the post-poker outrage died down, and then the gracious victor suggested that perhaps it might be a good time to take a break for pie.

As in all things—as in every single second of every single minute of every single moment of his life—Ed was extremely lucky to have Al, period; and specifically to have Al on his side.

“Everybody line up!” Al said in a voice like a bullwhip, which startled the entire teeming mass of fantastic humanity in the room so much that they went silent again. Then Al smiled like the sun coming out and said, “…please. We’re going to start with small slices to make sure that there’s enough for everyone, and then we can all fight to the death over whatever’s left.”

Elysia giggled. Hopefully by the time she found out how many times Al had been involved in literal fights to the death, she’d have forgotten this conversation.

“Glad that’s settled,” Ed said, giving Al a look that didn’t dull the smile a single watt. “I’ll cut.”

From the porch, a voice like pure, polished iron said: “ _Edward Elric, don’t you dare_!”

Ed froze.

Al froze.

Roy paused for a second, looking between them, and clumsily tried to conceal a wince as he quick-stepped over to the door.

He had barely opened it a crack before Izumi blasted through, somehow managing to make it look businesslike despite the fact that she’d just bowled over a general of the Amestrian military. Sig had to lower his head to get through the doorway.

“You,” Izumi said, briskly crossing over to Ed and putting a brown-paper-wrapped parcel in his hands, “are going to use _these_.”

“Um,” Ed said, “okay. Thank you.”

While he and Al tussled with the paper, Ed sneaked a glance over at Roy to make sure that the door hadn’t left a huge purple mark on his precious face that he’d whine about later or anything. Roy looked like he would survive, and then Ed noticed that Sig had started going around the room shaking hands. When Sig got to Armstrong, he was greeted with a “My _dear_ Mr. Curtis! You are exceedingly well-met! You and your formidable wife look strong and content!”, and Armstrong started pumping his hand so hard that it probably would have pulled Sig’s arm right off if he’d been even a little bit less on the burly side.

Ed looked back down right in time for Al to peel back the last of the paper and reveal the single most beautiful set of kitchen knives that he ever could have dreamed of laying eyes on. He could see a blurry version of his and Al’s open-mouthed awe reflected in the blades; the rich, dark wood of the handles gleamed almost as brightly.

“Sig has a block for them,” Izumi said. “You are going to keep them very sharp, and respect the fact that they can and will take off our fingers if you aren’t careful, and they are going to serve you faithfully for the rest of your pathetic little lives.”

In perfect unison, Ed and Al said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” Izumi said. “Put them down.”

Ed had assumed that the reason that she’d barged in was because she wanted him to use one to cut the pie, but he did what he was told, because there were still an awful lot of better ways to die.

The moment that his hands were free, Izumi had wrapped an arm around both of them and was hugging them so hard that she knocked the breath out of Ed’s lungs. He heard Al wheeze softly next to him, so it sounded like she was two for two.

“It’s been too long,” Izumi said, softly, “you _brats_.” She released them, patted their respective shoulders, straightened their respective shirts, stepped back, and put her hands on her hips. “So—did I hear something about pie?”

  


* * *

  


The knives were, to put a fine point on it, fucking incredible. Unsurprisingly, so—as Ed confirmed once Roy had swept over and cut the first bite off of his piece and put it into Ed’s mouth—was the pie.

Roy assessed the shift of the sun outside the windows as Ed tried to make the bastard take his own damn pie back. Ed had cut that piece incrementally larger specifically because he’d expected Roy to return after everyone had been served and try to feed half of it to him, but it was still _Roy’s_ , and he was supposed to be the one eating it.

“I should probably be going soon,” Roy said, slowly, “to embark on the quest for pizza before it gets too dark.”

That was a distressingly good point. Ed eyed Roy’s grip on the plate, but Roy probably wouldn’t respond well to Ed yanking it out of his hand and shoving him out the door so that he’d get in the car and go before driving got too perilous. The bastard needed to buck up and go to Marcoh and accept the possibility that he might wind up with cute glasses that he could play around with at work all day.

“You should,” Ed said. He hadn’t ruled out the yank-and-shove plan.

Roy paused, glanced at the door, and said, “But…”

Ed stared at him. “‘But’? You—there _can’t_ be anyone else coming. Who the hell else would come? Half the country is in my damn living room, Roy.”

“That’s a bit steep,” Roy said.

“So’s your face,” Ed said automatically. “Who else—”

The window on the wall behind him slid open.

Ed barely had time to turn around before Ling was climbing through it and attempting to navigate over the kitchen sink.

“You’re right,” Ling said over his shoulder as Lan Fan slipped through behind him. “That was a stupid one to pick. Should’ve gone with the bedroom. You should _always_ go with the bedroom.”

“What,” Ed said, slowly, channeling every iota of the disbelief that was rooting him to the floor, “the _fuck_.”

“Surprise!” Ling said, hopping down and flinging an arm around his shoulders. Ed was a hundred percent sure that the last time he’d gotten hugged this much was the Promised Day. “We were… what was it? Passing by? Something like that.”

“Sure,” Ed said, turning his highest-quality glare on Roy.

“We brought books,” Ling said. “They were a pain in the you-know-precisely-where from start to finish, but we figured that was the only thing that we c—is that _pie_?”

Ed didn’t bother trying to make him wait for a plate. Lan Fan held out three beautiful leather-bound books. Ed’s Xingese had been getting a little fuzzier day by day since they’d left, but he knew alkahestry texts when he saw them.

“We also brought fireworks,” Lan Fan said, producing a little box. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“Who would they tell?” Ling asked through the gigantic bite of pie that he’d just crammed into his mouth. “It’s not like the majority of their friends work in the government, or…” He paused, noticed Roy, and then slowly turned to stare at Ed. “Wait. You—in your letters. Ed. You didn’t—you meant… _that_ Roy?”

Ed could feel his face heating up a little, which seemed supremely unfair when he had hidden exactly nothing, and Ling just happened to be an idiot. “Exactly how many Roys do you think I know?”

Lan Fan looked from Ed to Roy and then back again and nodded once. “I’m not surprised.”

“You’re never surprised by anything,” Ling said, though at least he’d swallowed the pie so that he could infuse his voice with more of a whine. “You have strange names in this country! There could have been dozens of Roys! I cannot _believe_ that you would start dating your significantly older—”

Roy sighed.

“—ex-boss who you always claimed drove you to the brink of homicide and not even _tell_ —”

“I _did_ tell you,” Ed said.

Ling’s bottom lip stuck out and started wobbling. “But I didn’t _know_!”

“Well,” Ed said, “‘surprise’ right back atcha.” He fisted his hand in the front of Roy’s shirt, dragged him in, kissed him, and let go. “I’ll handle the international relations. Drive safe.”

Roy’s eyes didn’t leave his for a damn second as Roy’s smile curled warm. “I’ll make a concerted effort.”

“Good enough, I guess,” Ed said.

Ling was still staring at Ed in slack-jawed amazement when Roy closed the door behind him.

“So,” Al said, very, _very_ brightly. “How about some tea?”

  


* * *

  


Ed took Lan Fan over to Winry, Pinako, and Paninya so that they could coo over her automail (and guilt-trip her about whether she’d been taking proper care of it, although Ed figured she was probably safe there), and Ling and Maria started sharing disparaging inside jokes about Ling’s dad. Ed definitely understood that impulse even if he couldn’t really contribute to the conversation.

Momentarily, Al brought some tea over to where Ling was leaning against Maria’s chair, grabbed one of his hands mid-grandiose gesture, and put the mug into it.

There was a pause.

“This,” Ling said, drawing himself up to his even-more-annoying full height, “is a _traves-tea_.”

He waited. Lan Fan stared at him and then reluctantly started to slow-clap, which at least saved Ed the trouble of doing it.

“I mean it,” Ling said, swirling the mug around. “You really call this pathetic excuse for an infusion _tea_ in this miserable country? I’m embarrassed to be he—”

“Ling,” Al said, very calmly, with a dangerously placid smile, “this is some of the chrysanthemum that _you_ sent for my birthday.”

Ling blinked at him. Then Ling raised the mug towards his nose, sniffed, and blinked a little more.

“Ah,” he said. “So it is.”

Ed tried to exchange a long-suffering look with Lan Fan, but they both simultaneously ruined it by starting to grin.

“By the way,” Ling said, “when’s dinner?”

  


* * *

  


Roy returned, shortly before it got dark enough to endanger him, with an impressive stack of pizza boxes, a ton more tea, and a shit-lot of wine. He’d also procured enough cider to placate people like Ed, who had been waging a campaign to repurpose all idioms about “sour grapes” to refer to mediocre dinner drinks; and enough non-alcoholic cider to let Elysia in on the fun.

Roy had also acquired paper plates and paper cups, so that they wouldn’t have to do more dishes on top of the tea mug debacle currently propagating all over their countertops. Sometimes Ed had to admit that the man really _was_ a strategic genius.

The man was also a very nice pillow, which came in handy for times when your living room was brimming over with people that you loved, and you’d long since run out of seats. Roy had claimed a spot on the floor leaning against the side of the armchair that Pinako was still presiding over, and Ed had settled down with him, back pressed to Roy’s chest.

It was a bit of a shame, though, not to be able to look at Roy at the same time. The bastard was just so unreasonably _pretty_ in moments like this that it made Ed’s head spin—low light, dark hair, dark eyes… the replacement of a shiny wineglass with a paper cup was slightly less aesthetically gobsmacking, but Ed had seen the real thing enough times to extrapolate.

The story-swapping that ensued was every bit as legendary as Ed would have expected given the company. Elysia kept forgetting to eat her pizza because she was so engrossed. Ed let Al tell all the good mission-related ones, although he cut in to interject all of the necessary “allegedly”s. Ling had some _winners_ about the courts in Xing, which Lan Fan’s dry commentary made even funnier; and Roy just let Hawkeye roast the hell out of him with some stories from when they were kids. The way that his soft laughter resonated through Ed’s back made Ed’s skin tingle—lighting right down through his fingertips. It felt a little bit like alchemy sometimes.

The stories kept coming even after the food was long gone. Ed was so damn comfortable even sitting on the hardwood floor that he was half-considering a nap. Just letting the swell of familiar voices wash over him felt so good; he wanted to bask in it indefinitely. Having so many people who mattered so much to him in such a small space, starting to matter more to _each other_ , made him happy in a way that almost hurt.

Ling dropped down and sat cross-legged next to him before he could drift into a drowse. Roy—keeping his voice low, likely because he’d noticed that Ed had been about five minutes away from passing out and drooling on his shoulder again—was attempting to defend himself against allegations of bizarre procrastination methods, which wasn’t going to go very well.

“I’m so proud of you,” Ling said.

Ed stared at him. “How did you get so drunk so fast?”

“Shut up,” Ling said, lovingly. “I’m barely even tipsy. I mean it. Look at you! This is what you were always working for, wasn’t it? A place where you and Al could make a new home. It started with people, and it continues with pizza. It’s like a poem.”

Ed thought, for the first time in his entire life, that maybe he should have read more Xingese poetry, like Al had always said.

“It’s just nice,” Ling said, patting his arm. “And I’m so delighted that you finally shacked up with your hot older boss that you had such a gigantic, obvious, hilarious frustration-crush on when you were sixteen. That’s just _inspirational_.”

Ed’s first instinct instructed hm to tell Ling that Ed could still put a metal foot so far up his ass that he’d be tasting steel toes for weeks, but Ed had learned by now that his first instincts were much more reliable in fights than they were in conversations. He hadn’t seen Ling in ages, and positively reinforcing the visit as much as possible was probably the way to go.

Ed held on to the thought for a second. Part of why he hadn’t seen Ling in ages was that Ling had shouldered a frankly absurd amount of responsibility and went through every day almost entirely surrounded by people that he still wasn’t sure that he could trust. Ling kept the tone of his letters very light, and the implications in them very open-ended, but Ed remembered the _relief_ that had suffused Ling’s expressions and his body language so often when Ed and Al had hung out with him back in the day. He’d known that he could talk to them. He’d known that they cared, and they were on his side, and they wouldn’t betray him for the whole damn world.

And he’d known that he could be himself—Ling Yao, that was, not the Emperor. The Ling who ate everybody else’s food and skipped out on the bill; the Ling who pointedly stood behind Ed and looked down at the top of his head until he started swearing. The Ling who was still a kid, who had never _quite_ gotten the chance to be enough of one when they were all supposed to. The Ling who just wanted to have friends, and to have a little bit of fun.

Gossiping about Ed’s really-not-very-salacious love life was probably one of the highlights of his week.

“You have such a way with words,” Ed said, as deadpan as possible. “You sure you don’t want to quit your job and teach Amestrian at that cool university in the capital instead?”

“I’m sure,” Ling said. “Although you should—come teach, I mean. You may bring your politician, too, if you must. Might be good for diplomacy, now that I think about it.”

“He _does_ do work,” Ed said. “Sometimes.”

“He could take a sabbatical,” Ling said.

“I don’t think they do that in the military,” Ed said.

“Yet another reason,” Ling said, “that your system of government is objectively inferior. Like your _tea_.”

“I heard that,” Al called from halfway across the room.

  


* * *

  


Ed definitely did not fall asleep on Roy’s shoulder at one point, with all of the same grace and delicacy with which he’d used to pass out on train station benches and reading tables in the backs of libraries. He woke up to Roy rubbing at his leg very gently just above the automail port, which felt so transcendent that apparently his brain had rejected the idea that it could be a dream.

Since he was up, though, he got all the way up and started collecting people’s greasy paper plates and empty cups. Everyone protested that he shouldn’t, but then Roy stood up to help him, which no one seemed to mind as much.

They quickly filled the whole trash bin, so Ed took the bag out to the curb while Roy _oh-no-I-insist_ ed his way into cleaning up the rest of it. None of their neighbors were visibly glaring out the windows just yet, but Ed wasn’t going to get his hopes up on that front.

He paused, though, when he came back into the entryway.

He felt more than he heard Al coming up beside him, so the arm that slung itself around his shoulders didn’t catch him by surprise.

Neither did the fact that Al knew exactly what he was thinking as he stared down at the nearly incomprehensible amount of shoes piled up and lined up and kicked off and tipped over next to their new front door.

“It’s a lot easier to remember the things that we did wrong,” Al said, hugging Ed’s shoulders to him. _Level_ to him, Ed wanted the record to show. Their heads were at the same height, no matter what any person or measurement tool tried to claim. “But when you look at this… I mean, we sure must’ve done a lot of things _right_.”

Ed elbowed him in the ribs as gently as possible. “Can’t prove that. Shoes aren’t data.”

Al elbowed him back, not very gently at all. “Oh, gosh. Good point. I’ll just tell everybody to leave, then.”

Ed was already laughing as he elbowed again. “Shut _up_.”

  


* * *

  


Ed had known, in a rational way, since the first moment that Roy’s evil master plan had dawned on him, that everyone who had gathered here and brightened the house up to the last little corner was going to walk back out the door again.

He’d done his share of walking out of other people’s doors, and he’d tried to brace himself for it. It felt bittersweet in a way that stuck high in the center of his chest, just behind the top of his sternum. It prickled like he’d swallowed a sea urchin, but he was probably going to live.

They could _come back_. That was the important thing. He and Al had a place, now, to invite people into. They’d always had hearts big enough to hold half the universe, but now they had the floorplan and the walls. They had something that could, if they wanted, if they kept it, be permanent. They had something they could build on.

The goodbyes must have taken ages, in real time, but it felt like Ed blinked, and the minutes had slipped like cold water through his cupped hands. A dozen hugs, and a dozen promises, and a dozen heartfelt “Congratulations!”, and he and Al and Roy were standing in front of an empty shoe rack in their socks. Ed felt like he had whiplash. It had been so _much_ , and so full, and then—

“Well,” Roy said, slowly, “I’m sorry that I ambushed you with a party—”

“No, you’re not,” Ed and Al said at once.

Roy grinned. “It seemed like the polite lie.”

“I’m glad you did,” Al said. “We would have… you know. Put it off. Overthought it. Tried to make this place look perfect first, when that was never really the point.”

“You still owe us more tea, though,” Ed said. “And you have to take care of the plants.”

“Oh, yeah,” Al said. “Definitely.”

“Unfortunately,” Roy said, “I think that’s fair.”

  


* * *

  


The fact that it was far too dark for Roy to drive back safely always made an excellent excuse for him to stay over, although the excuse part was getting to be progressively less convincing as more and more of his toiletries migrated into Ed’s bathroom. It was nice, though. It was nice seeing two toothbrushes crossed in the cup next to the sink even when Roy wasn’t there. Sometimes people came back so much that it was almost like they’d never left at all.

When Ed finished dealing with his hair and joined Roy in his bedroom, the bastard was obviously taking up as much of the bed as humanly possible, _on purpose_.

“Mustang,” Ed said, “did you _really_ wait until I got a bigger bed just so that you could lie down exactly in the middle of it? You’re worse than a cat.”

Roy smirked at him. He knew exactly how he looked. “Am I cuter?”

Ed hauled his shirt off over his head so that Roy wouldn’t catch him smiling. “Depends on the cat.”

He emerged from his shirt just in time to see Roy pantomiming being stabbed in the heart and then twisting the knife several times for good measure.

“I’m helping,” Roy said. “I’m keeping it warm for you. Housewarming, bedwarming—just a few of my innumerable talents.”

“Yeah,” Ed said, dropping his jeans to the floor. He’d deal with the clump of clothes on the carpet later; pajamas took precedence. “Like sass, and snoring—”

“I do _not_ snore,” Roy said, gazing at him adoringly, “you heinous brat.”

Ed waved a hand. He had a list to get through. “And lying about snoring—”

Roy made a point of draping himself tragically across the pillow. “I don’t lie, because I don’t—”

Ed sat down on the edge of the bed, peeled off his socks, and pitched them in the general direction of the laundry basket. “And throwing secret parties.”

“It wasn’t really _secret_ ,” Roy said, dragging a few fingertips idly up his spine. “Moderately covert, possibly. Slightly clandestine.”

“Al didn’t know about it,” Ed said, shifting over and hiking the automail leg up onto the mattress first. “Al knows everything.”

“Mm,” Roy said, wrapping both arms around him before he’d even turned out the light. “Do I get points for that?”

“Sneaky points,” Ed said. Wriggling around and cozying up to him was still a little easier in the dark. “They only count for half as much as regular ones. They have to be smaller so that you can’t see them.”

He could feel Roy’s smile against his hair. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good,” Ed said.

He closed his eyes and listened to Roy’s heartbeat in the dark for what felt like a long time. He could tell by the breathing, though, that Roy wasn’t asleep yet.

He nudged his shoulder a little at Roy’s collarbone. “Hey.”

The low, contented, almost unconscious sounds that rumbled right out from the center of Roy’s chest at times like this always made Ed’s knees a little gooey, so it was a good thing that he was lying down. “Mm?”

“What you did today,” Ed said. “Thanks.”

He could hear Roy’s smug little grin. “What I did today? Not snoring, you mean.”

Ed shifted back far enough for Roy to intuit that he was making a face. “Yeah. That. Obviously.”

Roy caught a hand in his hair and leaned in to kiss the bridge of his nose, darkness notwithstanding, the absolute _bastard_. “My pleasure, my dear.”

  


* * *

  


The bed shifted, and the sheets rustled. Ed rolled partway over; it felt like he’d only slept an hour or two—

He could just make out the silhouette of Roy sitting up in the bed, which was… weird. Nightmares usually made him shake, first, hard enough that the mattress springs squealed sometimes, before he ever moved this far.

“Hey,” Ed managed with the bleary remnants of his voice. “Wh—”

Roy put a finger to his lips.

There was a knock at the door.

Then there was a silence.

Then there was a distant voice saying “I _knew_ it,” and another one saying, “You didn’t know anything!”

Ed sighed, rolled out of the nice, warm, cozy bed, and tromped down the hall. He could hear Roy fumbling in the nightstand—presumably for the spare pair of ignition gloves, rather than in the fun drawer, but they weren’t going to need them.

Roy had used his infernal stride advantage to catch up by the time that Ed opened the door.

“Ed!” Jerso said, and Zampano said, “Congratulations on the house!”

“Thanks,” Ed said.

A moment passed as both of them looked at him, dressed in pajama pants and fuck-all else; and then at Roy, in a T-shirt and sweatpants and his gloves; and then at the extremely empty room behind them.

“I _told_ you,” Jerso said. “I told you that he didn’t mean twelve _midnight_.”

“Why the hell not?” Zampano said, sounding slightly frantic. “It makes perfect sense! It’s a new house party; why wouldn’t it be like a new year’s party? It’s a transitional thing! It—”

The door to Al’s bedroom opened, and Al shuffled out swathed in his giant fluffy bathrobe and kitty slippers. He yawned cavernously, rubbed at his eyes with both fists like he had since he was three, and then blinked a few times at the figures in the doorway.

His face lit up.

“Hey!” he said. “How are you guys? Come on in! What the heck are you doing out there? It’s _cold_!”

  


* * *

  


Al made tea. Ed put a shirt on. Roy collapsed in the squooshy armchair, and Ed collapsed on top of him. Jerso and Zampano bickered about whether time was real and then presented Al with an admittedly very nice handmade wooden wall plaque that said _Home is where you’re happy_.

“What do you think?” Ed mumbled in Roy’s ear.

Roy was stroking his hair, which meant that Ed was going to pass out again in T minus two minutes max, but if he talked fast enough, maybe that would do it. “What do I think of what?”

“What do you think I should get the neighbors?” Ed said. “Like… for an apology. And… a… ‘hi’. Since we skipped that. Do I have to bake something? I could make brownies. You can do ’em out of a box.”

“I think,” Roy said, “that we can afford to put that problem off until tomorrow.”

“Dunno why you’re so obsessed with bein’ in charge of this place,” Ed muttered into his shoulder, “when you’re already the king of the procrasti-nation.”

Roy continued stroking his hair. “At least I can reach the top shelf.”

Ed tried to growl, but it morphed into a laugh halfway up, and then he was screwed.

Al had put up the plaque from the chimeras—ex-chimeras? Ed wanted to ask, but this didn’t seem like the time; last he’d heard from Al, they were still much more capable of shape-shifting than they liked—right next to the fireplace. It looked nice. It was nicer still that every time they looked at it, they were going to remember this.

Well, theoretically. Ed was pretty sure that he was going to be asleep within the next few minutes, so he would probably forget this particular part, but he couldn’t say that he minded.

Maybe things would just calm down naturally, and they’d all keep talking in low voices, and Ed could just doze off on top of Roy, and magically not even get a cramp in his neck, and everything would…

“Oh, my gosh,” Al said. “Where are my manners? You must be hungry! Do you want some pizza?”

Never mind.


End file.
